Local Blogs = Citizen Participation
by Matt on Aug 19, 2009 in Industry
There’s an interesting article that suggests the success of local blogs can lead to increased citizen participation in local government/community projects.
As the story goes, the City of Seattle posted a survey asking residents in 24 Seattle neighborhoods to share their thoughts on neighborhood planning goals. Here’s a chart showing the neighborhood-by-neighborhood responses that the city received back:
See those neighborhoods at the bottom — the ones that returned the most surveys? They have something in common, according to Katie Sheehy in Seattle’s Planning Dept.
“They already have a really strong blog presence in the neighborhood. There’s a lot of people already engaged in neighborhood issues through the blogs, and I think that’s what’s driven a lot of people to respond.”
Neat to have some visual evidence of what local blogging can do in a neighborhood, isn’t it?
(found via Lost Remote)
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It’s an interesting chart, but I certainly wouldn’t make too much of it. There may be a correlation between good neighborhood blogs and resident participation in the survey, but the fact is that both Queen Anne and Wallingford, which scored relatively poorly, have well developed and seemingly popular blogs while Columbia City, for example, does not. These neighborhoods are hardly equal in population either. Still, an interesting idea that citizen journalism could lead to greater civic participation.
I’d love to think that this was true, but could it be that the type of citizens who are normally engaged in the political process are the types who are likely to start up local blogs?
So high voting turnout, levels of education, involvement in local charities and churches are more likely to produce the blogs rather than the blogs producing all the great civic virtues?
However robust/not the analysis, the principal is an inspirational one!
[...] that locally well-informed people are also more politically engaged at that level. Take a look at data from Seattle, which shows a neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdown of hyperlocal news blogs that served each neighborhood and corresponding high participation in local government projects. [...]